he does all that. Is it all planned out down to every detail, as some seem to think? Or
is Oda simply a free-styling genius, that improvises everything? To answer this question
I needed to find out more about Oda as a person and as a storyteller, which is surprisingly
hard. As you might know, the man likes to stay on the sidelines, preferring to leave
the spotlight on his work. There are close to no pictures of him and actually some fake
ones, and not much is known about his private life either. Though to be fair he doesn’t
really seem to have much of a private life in the first place. So to learn as much as
I could, I tried to find all the infos I could. Articles, magazines and all the interviews
with him I could find. Which also weren’t all too many.
Now the first thing I came to realise about Oda-sensei, as most people in Japan respectfully
like to call him, is that he is actually quite deceptive about his own working process. In
a good way that is. He seems to be quite humble and maybe even a bit uncomfortable talking
about his work. In one interview for instance, Oda says he doesn’t really try to put any
deep meanings into his story. However, we all know that almost no other story has as
many underlying themes and moral problems in its narrative as One Piece. The racism
towards the fishmen, the injustice of the world government, dreams and freedom. All
of which makes sense. Any long running story, that’s purely focused on action and battle,
without any deeper meaning would get dull and repetitive very very fast. Definitely
long before reaching 1000 chapters. In another interview, Oda states that he absolutely hates
tear jerkers in storytelling. However, he admits, that as we all know One Piece doesn’t
exactly suffer from an acute heartbreaking-moments-shortage. And in general, Oda likes to say that he simply
draws what he feels like drawing and often just improvises, a famous example being the
introduction of the supernova. But as I found out, this is only half the truth. Because,
as many people working with him have commented, Oda seems to be an absolute perfectionist
when it comes to his work. And he knows that. His obsession with storytelling comes up quite
often in his interviews. Here. When asked, what about his work makes him the most happy
his answer was this: “That’d probably have to be whenever I make a good story. I’m
a wreck when I can’t do my job well. I wind up moping if I don’t feel I’ve fully completed
a good story. […] I can’t rest until I make up for it the next week.” Oda studies
story from history, folk lore and especially film. His favourite directors include the
likes of Tim Burton, Hayao Miyazaki and Quentin Tarantino. And if there is anything that these
3 have in common it’s their desire to tell a perfect story. Hm. So, Improvisation AND
perfectionism? Can these two things actually both be true, I wondered. And even if Oda
figured that out somehow, how can such a long-running story actually keep delivering in the first
place? I had to dig deeper.
Looking through more of the interviews, I stumbled across one of the mind-blowing main
techniques that Oda uses to not only keep the story energetic and interesting, but is
the foundation for his crazy web of characters: All characters in One Piece are real people.
Let me explain. When writing his story, it appears that Oda thinks himself into each
of his characters to find out what exactly that person would realistically do in any
given moment. Now, obviously to do that you need to basically be able to see each and
every character as if it where a real person in the real world. How does he do that? Well,
have you ever wondered what these really weird details are we often learn about characters
in manga? Like, what is Doflamingo’s favourite food? What is Zoro’s blood type. Or, how
tall is Law? Oh, and by the way, when is Kaido’s birthday? I’ve always been really confused
why Oda would come up with these random fun facts about characters to share them in an
SBS or something, and also that he had the time to do so in the first place. What I finally
realised when thinking about this was that it’s the other way around. The SBS and the
vivre cards use details that Oda already has created for himself. As the author of Jojo
explains in his book, apparently, it’s considered best-practice among mangaka’s to create
crazily detailed profiles of each character. Everything from basic physical attributes,
over history and past to personality and quirks. This may seem like an unnecessary amount of
time spent thinking about each individual character, especially since many of these
things never come up in the story at all, but that’s exactly the point. Getting to
know your character so well and in so much detail that you know exactly what they will
do next. This is how Oda writes. What would each character do in this Situation, based
on the fact that I know everything about him or her. That’s why characters in One Piece
rarely, or I would even say NEVER feel out of place. But I was shocked to learn that
Oda takes it even further. ‘I write in pretty minute detail when someone makes a certain
action, how the people around that individual will respond. Normally when making a story
move along it's fine to simply draw the main characters. But rather than just that,
I want to write about what the townspeople think by putting all feelings in their place
within a scene.’ This is what we’re dealing with here. And it’s exactly this method
of writing organic and realistic plot based on real characters, that leads to the story
side-tracking and expanding even when Oda doesn’t plan to do so. By creating his characters
in such rich detail, they pretty much advance the plot for him. This is next-level writing.
Now the main issue with this organic and improvised writing technique is the risk of loosing focus
and having the story move further and further away from the original plot. I’m sure you
have seen stories like this before, where suddenly side plots become new main plots
and the main objective is completely forgotten. To understand why Oda is able to use this
powerful, but tricky technique so successfully then, I had to go back all the way to the
start of the series. Oda himself said that the only things he really knew before starting
One Piece where Luffy and his powers, some major plot points like the fishmen and the
crew, the ending as well as the fact that eh wanted to draw an epic adventure. Pretty
much the exact opposite of having everything planned out right from the start. However
these things that Oda named are just what any good story needs before you start writing.
A framework and rulebook to operate in. Oda knew who Luffy is and what he wanted right
from the start. He also knew what the story would be about and what would mark its ending.
This way, no matter how his characters would move the story, they would always be striving
towards that ending, giving the story structure and direction despite the improvised style.
Further, establishing the rules of the world right from the start allows for consistent
and organic plot. There are devil fruits with special powers in this world. It’s a world
of pirates, covered mostly by water. Monsters exist. Anything can happen in the grand line.
Oda established these thing right from the start and within these rules can let his characters
run free. To show you how important this is, consider this negative example. Oda knew something
like will power would be important, but he didn’t establish Haki as a power right from
the start. It’s fair game to add new story elements and rules as you go, but since Haki
came into conflict with the stablished fighting system, some people were unhappy with it,
as it doesn’t fit into the early parts of the story as neatly. This otherwise exceptionally
strong set of rules and the overall direction of the plot Oda has established, ultimately
allow him to let his characters move freely and let the plot take him wherever it leads
him. And so it finally clicked for me. The secret to Oda’s genius is that he doesn’t
improvise everything or plan everything, but uses the best of both approaches to create
this huge and colourful world with thousands of individual characters and hundreds of locations
based on his inspiration & imagination. A story that now rightfully has breeched 1000
chapters.
Now if you are just as impressed by this as I am, let me tell you that you can use this